This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

Animating text using a path preset

By now you should be understanding how versatile and convenient preset text animators can be. You’ll use another type of text animation preset next to animate the words directed by along a motion path. After Effects includes several animation presets that animate text along a prebuilt path. These presets also provide placeholder text with formatting when you apply them, so in this exercise, you will enter and format your text after you apply the preset.

Double-click the Pipes preset. Bridge returns you to After Effects, where the preset automatically creates a new layer, Pipes,
with a predefined path that zigzags across the composition. The text on the path is obscured by the movie title. Don’t worry.
You’ll fix that in a minute.

Customizing the preset path

Double-click the Pipes layer in the Timeline panel. After Effects switches to the Horizontal Type tool () and selects the word pipes in the Composition panel. Type directed by to replace it. Press Enter on the numeric keypad when you’re done. After Effects updates the Timeline panel with the new
layer name.

Drag the current-time indicator across the time ruler between 5:00 and 8:00 to see how the words directed by move on-screen—and then off-screen. You’ll fix the text so that it stays on-screen, but now is a good time to adjust the
position of the path in the composition so that it doesn’t interfere with the movie title.